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How are meals decided at your house?

I've been trying to figure out my dinner calendar for about 1.5 hours now. I'm only going from the 8th-30th of the month. I'm still missing 6 meals, and I'm stumped.

I'm curious as to how meals are decided at your house. We used to just go day-to-day and decide then what to eat that night. I'm so tired of not having something I need, and practically running to the store each afternoon. This will save me time from thinking what to cook each day, and I can go grocery shopping ONCE a week for these items instead of running each day.

The dinner calendar also helps me save money. There is really no excess buying with this. I don't have to pick up something and say,"Maybe we can have this tomorrow" and let it sit in the pantry for 2 months still unopened.

I make a dinner calander like you. I divied the month up for 2 shopping trips, and buy everrything i need right then. So i only grocery shop 2 times out of the month. I have the same problem though, i always get stuck with about 4-5 meals so i start asking the kids and the hubby lol

I usually decide the day before or in the morning. I then go and buy whatever we need, if we don't have the ingredients on hand. Sometimes I'll ask my husband to pick between two options, but for the most part, he likes anything. :)

i plan meals for 15 day periods. Whatever im kind of craving go on the list. I look at my favorite restraunts online and look for the recipes to some of my fave meals online, or copycats of the recipes. allrecipes.com, kraftrecipes.com, campbellskitchen.com

I do it a week at a time. I can't handle thinking about cooking farther out than that. I always ask if anyone would like something in particular that we have not had in awhile, but it is left up to me for the most part.

I make the dinner calander. I try to not have to many of the same things in a row so I dont get tired of eating it. DH will usualy give his imput on some dinners he wants if I cant think of anything else to make. We will usualy have chicken rice and veggies twice a week (spaghetti once a week roast beef subs with onion soup one night and tacos one night the other days are leftovers...Then the next week I will add different things like potato soup, meatloaf, chicken qusadillas, chicken alfreado, frozed pizza, lazania(sp) And one or 2 new things every month. I also try to do one crock pot dinner once a week if i can.

We go back and forth. Sometimes, we're really good about making a calendar, but we only do it about 2 weeks in advance. Other times, we're flying by the seat of our pants. DH does the cooking in our house, but we decide on dinner together. Since adding our daughter to the mix, we've gotten real lazy with meals. lol Between 2 kids and working full time, most nights we are exhausted by the time we get home and start working on dinner. We typically rotate the same things every week: chicken, roast, spaghetti, breakfast, pizza and add in a few different things. Lately we've been on the hunt for new ideas because we're started to get tired of what's in our rotation.

My Hubby, children, and I all sit down and name meals we like. Hubby and I will refer back to those meals and write down all the ingredients which ends up making our shopping list. Many meals have some of the same ingredients in them so we try not to double buy it. We then keep our list after shopping so we know what we did buy for and we decide on the meal for the next night a day ahead of time so we can pull the meay outta the freezer. Some of our favorites are polka dot pasta, spagetti, steak and veggies, stir fry, roast, pork and sauerkraut, personal pizzas (kids get to add their own toppings and love it), tacos... We get most of our recipes from the back of a package we are using or from the recipe ideas at the store or in the coupon section.

I try to plan things, but things get crazy occasionally and we fall off the shopping cart. I think I'll try it again..shopping trip tomorrow. It's been a month since our last trip though...we managed ok, but we've been eating on the go a lot lately. That gets expensive!